Discussion for article #229685
Of course, I think it’ll be hysterically funny if the Dark Money interests spent all this money trying to win the election and fail.
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Unfortunately, every 4 years during the mid-terms, they will get all the encouragement they will ever need. During POTUS election years, it’ll be hit or miss for them, so overall they’ll be batting over 50%, which is, again, all the encouragement they’ll ever need.
Welcome to the United States of Plutocracy. Please take a number and have a seat and your life-path assignment representative will be with you shortly. Good luck, and hopefully you draw an assignment other than minimum-wage-terminal-poverty. However, I will warn you that the Masters have been working hard to create more openings in that life-path while shutting down the creation of others.
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100 years of winter, and never Christmas. Think of that.
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80% GOP/Teatroll dark money, mostly spent on advertising
20% Dem/liberal dark money, mostly spent on advertising
=
100% of the MSM shifting to the right.
You do the fucking math.
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I just wonder how effective the dark advertizing really is. I live in Kansas City. We have the Roberts/Orman and Brownback/Davis campaigns in full swing. Both Roberts and Brownback backers are spending tons and tons of money, but for the most part they are simply repeating the same mindlessly negative ads over and over again. Both Orman and Davis have the best ads and they seem to be working.
One ad running against Brownback shows a man digging a hole out in rural Kansas. Shovelfuls of dirt keep flying out of the ground as a list of Kansas’ problems caused by Brownback’s misadministration keep scrolling down the screen. At the end of 30 seconds a farmer walks over to the hole and shouts “Governor maybe its time you stop digging.” That is an effective ad. So is the Davis ad where the Republican former head of the Kansas Senate personally endorses Davis.
A lot of the dark money for Roberts ads are ugly and they are playing right now a day before the election. I was always taught going negative just before an election suppresses your own vote more than the opponent’s. That a Candidate goes totally negative at the end of an election is usually a sign of a candidate in trouble. The Orman ads are upbeat and talk about independence from the kind of hidden people who put up the ugly ads.
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Ask the Daily News, which endorsed Grimm. Or ask that news outlet that endorsed Kasich and then demanded that nobody look at the video they posted on the intertubes of them interviewing him while he behaved rudely and refused to answer questions. Or ask CNN and their several years of rightward drift. Or ask MSNBC and their chickenshit instant-apology vending machine. Look at the false equivalence paradigm they all espouse and tell us who benefits from it the most. That’s all bought and paid for by ad dollars. Ad dollars long ago became the arbiter of truth in news and the right has long made the effort to usurp that truth by opening the floodgates to ad dollars on their behalf from the plutocrats who support them. Citizen United and other rulings have largely made their wet dreams come true in terms of turning the entire Fourth Estate into a propaganda circus for themselves. When Reince Priebus threatens a boycott of a network and all the network can think “our ad revenue from conservative Super PACs and other conservative sources is going to dry up quick” and “holy shit, we’re going to miss out on making all those ad dollars we would’ve made during a POTUS debate”, then the fix is in.
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Why should this make any difference? How can any amount of money make bad ideas good? If the problem is gullible voters that are influenced by deceptive ads, then fix the real problem.
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I don’t think you understood the story about the Daily News endorsing Grimm.
Yet more evidence that Kennedy’s presumptions in Citizens United were just plain wrong.
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A very major thank you to Justices Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito for aiding the complete corruption of what was once a democracy into what is now a plutocracy. The Citizens United decision formally showed the world that America is up for sale to the highest bidder, because Money is Speech and Filthy Lucre feeds all political whores.
NO ONE trusts a politician. A used car salesman has more credibility. DARK MONEY aka DIRTY MONEY.
Why? They have plenty more and are in this for the long game. The real impact of this stuff is more likely at the local and state levels where cash goes a lot further, and corrupt local and state governance have more impact on most people, though the focus is usually federal. So, that goes under the radar until your local school board is voting to ban textbooks that claim that the Earth is a sphere or some such.
I know, but the reality is that there are men who are literally squandering their fortunes trying to influence our elections and it will end up hurting them in the long run if they don’t continue to win.
But yes, the battle needs to be waged at the local level a lot harder.
But if we sin a little, and they sin a lot, we’re equally sinners, so no harm no foul. Oops, I meant “no fowl”! They’re not vultures and hawks; we’re not chickens and turkeys. Not at all.
Thanks, Sniffit! Most people are unaware of this simple economic fact. They are mystified by the rightward shift in editorial policies at not only cable news channels, but in major newspapers and broadcast TV. It’s insidious and very difficult to fight. But remember, the plutocrats get their money a little at a time from us, the true wealth creators. If we spend wisely with an eye toward who ends up with the profit, we can have an impact on this game.
You’re saying the MSM (owned or directed by the Right) are paying themselves to heave the Overton Window of civic discussion in the direction of conservative extremism.
It’s a win-win for them.